Yeah, so, all that stuff about updating more frequently? It was a nice idea. Then in the spring, fed up with our neighbors and worried about floods, my partner and I decided to sell our house. What commenced was four grueling months of more or less non-stop work to that end, during which time my cameras have been gathering dust. I had to drop out of both of my year-long challenges in order to keep up with house work and, uh, work work.

But all that is behind us. I have made some gear upgrades (added a Sony A7RII and a couple of lenses, plus a new lens for the Oly - more on these later, perhaps), and I'm trying to get back in the swing. We are celebrating the house sale with a road trip through southern Norway, complete with a giant van emblazoned with the name of the rental company, and a mountain of warm clothes and whitewater kayaking equipment.

Any hope we might have had of going incognito...

Copyright 2016 Hannah C. Nesbeda. All rights reserved.

We arrived on Saturday after a surprisingly painless direct flight to Oslo (for us AND the aforementioned mountain of equipment), to discover it has been raining a bit less than usual, and the rivers are all running a bit low. Fortunately, too low for the locals turns out to be a decent level for us on a lot of things, and Boyfriend's dismay has been put to rest with a couple of lovely runs on the Raudalselvi in the Voss region. I brought an inflatable boat and have had a bit less zeal for the steep creeks, so these first days I have mostly been running shuttle and taking pictures while he banks some adrenaline.

It is beautiful here. We have come during a true shoulder season - summer is definitively over but winter is still a ways off - so a lot of our exploration is characterized by a sense that every place feels a bit deserted and lonely. After the overstimulation of the past few months, it is actually quite lovely, even though we keep finding ourselves in restaurants where we are the only patrons.

Copyright 2016 Hannah C. Nesbeda. All rights reserved.

Sunday was, from what we gathered, an unseasonably beautiful day, and might be the last sunshine we'll see before we head back to New England. I was loving the play of low-hanging nordic sunlight through the trees, and glinting off the water of the river. Today the weather pattern was a bit more unsettled - the remnants of tropical storm Karl are headed this way and it has been breezy and intermittently sprinkling. Still lovely, though, and the promise of a real rainstorm tomorrow has us pretty excited.

After another round of river fun in the morning, we are headed north, toward Averøy and the famed Atlantic Road. Stay tuned.